


Agonist

by xerampelinae



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Pre-Avengers (2012), references to severe asthma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 03:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2214603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ag·o·nist: a substance that initiates a physiological response when combined with a receptor</p><p>Pre-Avengers introspective of Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agonist

The nose of the plane dips and Steve lets it, sharpens the decline. He doesn’t want to see old sights the way he knows London: bombed out wreckage people were still trying to live in and between. He doesn’t want to see the last traces of two guys from Brooklyn disappear into fire, to be the only mark left of Bucky Barnes’ life.

The people on the other side of the radio think his last words are to Peggy. They also think he’s dead (or at least unconscious, when they eventually find the plane and his body within it) with the force of impact. Only briefly, Steve thinks, remembering waking up and his chest being so tight--he tries to stand up, raise his arms and settle them in the way that opens his airways like his ma taught him, but he can’t. At least he’s upright, still strapped into the pilot’s chair. It’ll ease the coughing. Just a little bit. Every inhalation of cold air is a knife in his lungs.

Steve closes his eyes and tries to dream away the time until Bucky comes home and adds his warmth to the room. 

“Bucky,” he says, words turning to frost in the air.

The psychologist says it’s normal to dream about the cold; even if he was unconscious post-landing, there’s a reason pilots wore such heavy jackets. Steve just nods and doesn’t say anything. They think they know him through and through, from the propaganda and his SSR file carried to the present with SHIELD’s evaluations.

Steve wonders if they've built a chain of events and named him a deathseeker from its data.

“What do you think when you walk about? What do you think of, yourself in 2012?” the psychologist asks, face carefully bland. “You don’t have to answer, but think about it."

What does he think? Does he think of Captain America, of Steven G. Rogers (who was born to a woman widowed less than a year before the end of the war), of the guy from Brooklyn?

Who does he even picture, Steve wonders. This is the only body most people connect with his face, but for 24 years it was different. 

Steve wakes warm and searching for Bucky--the only reason he could, most seasons, and if they were always living hand to mouth, there was no reason to have another bed, not when Bucky’s warmth helped. Steve wakes warm, anticipating bronchospasm in the cold’s company.

This body is property of the United States Army. It does not feel anything that Steve Rogers had, save for the burn of deep winter and the hollowing joint ache of bitter cold. 

Stevie Rogers is still waiting for the twisted unease of poor summer air in his gut, for colds and pneumonia to slowly drown him.

What is Steve’s place in this world--Steve who was frozen with his demons, with loss and mortar fire fresh in his mind--when everything else kept moving onward? These are what keep Steve in empty gyms late into the night: he will catch up with the world eventually, but until then he will settle himself in this borrowed body.

**Author's Note:**

> This story started off as an attempt to realistically depict Steve with asthma. It ended up written as references, which I've taken from my asthmatic family's experiences. If I have misrepresented it, please tell me and I will do my best to correct it.


End file.
